Outlook is a very powerful program but at times can go weird as well. This excellent program is flooded with so many features, functions, settings, and capabilities that it is so difficult to learn them all and use effectively. Sometimes, you may get confused of all these functions and perform wrong functions creating a huge blunder. Hence, Microsoft Outlook is both a problem and a solution. One should be aware of some tips to manage and make use of your Outlook features productively. While working on Outlook, there are a couple of things that has to be kept in mind. By doing this, you’ll find that Outlook runs more stable and more pleasant to work with.

Here are five such tips that can be implemented to manage your Outlook quickly and easily.

Backup your Outlook regularly

Backup stands at the top of all other tips; no one would ever like losing their data. Moreover, your Outlook contains your vital mails attachments, reminders and many more that are of lots of importance to you. Hence, it’s equally important to take backup regularly.

Making a backup of Outlook is not as simple as copying a file. The Outlook PST file is quite complicated, hence, Microsoft has supplied a free backup add-in that helps you to locate your .pst file and assign a backup location to them. It will even remind you to make your backup on regular basis.

Disable all the unwanted add-ins

At times, when you install an application, the program in turn would install few options into your Outlook that you never use. For example, when you install iTunes, it will also install an Outlook add-in to sync your calendar to your iPod. But you might not even use that function of your iPod or your iPod version might not even support it.

Having numerous add-ins installed can make your Outlook to perform slowly or even make it corrupt when the add-in itself is faulty or is not compatible with the Outlook version you are using or might even conflict with another add-in. Therefore, you should disable or uninstall add-ins that you are not using within your Outlook.

Keep your PST-file free from errors

There are certain situations wherein some errors can get into your PST file. One common error found was when your Outlook crashes. After your Outlook is crashed, you might often find that the Outlook will trash your hard disk for a while; it then does a quick integrity check on your PST file and fixes some of the small issues directly when needed.

After a systematic check Outlook will run normally again. However, that’s not enough you still might want to regularly check your PST file for issues with scanpst.exe. This will do an in-depth test against your .pst file then the quick automated check.

A PST file that is free of errors can prevent data loss, indexing issues.

Don’t import but connect to PST files

When you have an extra PST file (for instance an archive) and you want to open the file; don’t use the Import function. Instead, you can directly open PST files in Outlook by using:

File -> Open-> Outlook Data File…

If you want to store any data from this extra PST file to your main .pst file, simply copy or move those items from one folder to the other. There are really only a few situations wherein importing a PST file is preferred. If you are using this feature for a PST file, just evaluate that everything is working fine; else, you might land in disastrous situations.

Quick Steps

Sometimes the “Rules” function of your Outlook is not ideal for dealing with your mail, mostly for those you want to perform multiple tasks with a certain mail. For such circumstances, Quick Steps is the best choice that allows you to combine multiple actions under a single click so that you don’t have to manually repeat the steps every time. It’s essential for decreasing time and effort spent in your email and allows you to be more productive.

So, with the help of these above illustrated 5 simple tips you can effectively manage your Outlook. In case you just simply use your Outlook as you like, then there are chances of losing your data. This might be because of your PST file corruption. In such instances you will lose your entire Outlook data including your Outlook emails, contacts, notes and all other Outlook attributes. If you are stuck with similar situation, then just make use of the Remo Repair Outlook PST tool that can easily fix corrupt PST file within minutes. Nevertheless it’s better to be careful with Outlook hence make sure you follow the above listed 5 tips while using your Outlook in order to manage your PST file.

5 important tips to manage your Outlook was last modified: October 7th, 2013 by Tony Landry